Sour Beer Is Risky Business, Starting With the Name

Eric and Lauren Salazar working on the next batch of wood-aged sour brown beer at the New Belgium Brewing Company in Colorado.Credit
Stephen Collector for The New York Times

BREWERS of barrel-aged sour beer take risks and practice patience. They wait as long as three years to see whether the cloudy liquids resting in oak ripen into shades of gold or raspberry and develop the ideal tart, tangy flavors, or become undrinkable, ravaged by aggressive yeasts. It’s an expensive gamble.

And even if they succeed, they may still have to persuade people to drink them.

“We still get customers who call to let us know a bottle of our barrel-aged beer had gone bad because it tasted sour,” said Vinnie Cilurzo, owner of Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa, Calif. “Sour beers will never become the pale ales of craft brewing.”

But for the brewers of sour beer, and its fans, the wait is worth it.

"I almost regret that we call them sour beers,” said Tom Nickel, owner of O’Brien’s Pub in San Diego. “The word ‘sour’ requires a bit of a leap of faith.” The best of some sour styles, such as gueuze, he said, have flavors like champagne or fresh lemonade. “You may not like the idea you’re drinking sour beer, but your mouth will like it."

While the umbrella of “sour ales” includes many styles, traditional sour beers are most popular in Belgium, home of lambics, gueuzes and Flemish sour ales. But in the last few years American brewers have been trying their hand at imitating and riffing off those styles by fermenting with special yeasts and lactic acid bacteria. Sometimes they age the beers in wood or stainless steel and add raspberries, cherries, apricots and other fresh fruit for flavor, before blending the end results.

They’re driven by a thirst for a challenge — in brewing and drinking. Producing a barrel-aged sour beer requires a willingness to take risks.

(Two places in New York City that are serving sour-style beers are the Blind Tiger, 281 Bleecker Street, near Jones Street, Greenwich Village, 212-462-4682; and Jimmy’s No. 43, 43 East Seventh Street, near Second Avenue, East Village, 212-982-3006.)

Peter Bouckaert was one of the first brewers to produce sour ales in the United States. Mr. Bouckaert, a native of Belgium who had worked at breweries there, including Rodenbach, became brewmaster at New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colo., in 1996. He released La Folie, a Flanders-style red, in 1999. It’s one of the New Belgium’s three wood-aged sour beers that are well regarded by aficionados, even though they make up less than 2 percent of its sales.

“Pushing in new directions is part of the true craft-brewing spirit,” Mr. Bouckaert said. “We’re not going to do market research first.”

Allagash Brewing in Portland, Me., produces sour beers using spontaneous fermentation, a traditional Belgian method of exposing the wort — beer before fermentation — to air, so it can come in contact with naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria. It’s the first American brewery to do so. Allagash calls the beers Coolships, the term for the wide, bathtub-like container that allows the wort to kiss the air.

“Some beer geeks are trying to catch me cheating,” said Jason Perkins, Allagash’s brewmaster. “If we wanted to add yeast to make a sour beer, we’d just do that. Instead we’re trying to remain true to the traditional lambic style.”

Mr. Perkins considers the early batches of tart, fruity, dry Coolships experimental; the beers have yet to be kegged or bottled for the public.

But unlike most brewing yeasts, Brettanomyces can easily survive in low-nutrient environments — it doesn’t die easily, especially in wood. Working with Brettanomyces risks contaminating everything it contacts — barrels and work aprons, stainless steel tanks and batches of beer.

Russian River uses all four strains of Brettanomyces commercially available to brewers, even though the yeasts could destroy 90 percent of the brewery’s beers that aren’t supposed to be sour. To avoid cross-contamination, Mr. Cilurzo limits Brettanomyces brewing to a specific area and equipment. Brewers working in that space aren’t allowed to enter other parts of the brewery on the same day and are encouraged to wash their clothes after work.

Some neighboring Sonoma County winemakers consider the yeast a scourge capable of destroying entire vintages of wine and refuse to sell Russian River the chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet barrels in which the sour ales age.

“Some winemakers won’t even enter our brewery for a beer because they’re so disgusted by Brettanomyces,” Mr. Cilurzo said.

Ron Gansberg, the brewmaster at Cascade Brewing in Portland, Ore., has another problem with Brettanomyces.

“Brettanomyces beers can be very sour to where they’re an event unto themselves,” Mr. Gansberg said. “Not necessarily something to pair with food.”

Sour beers made with yeasts other than Brettanomyces can have more balance and body, he said, which is why he’s never intentionally added the yeast to any of his beers.

For Mr. Gansberg, producing sour beers provided a chance to stand out from the multitude of craft brewers in the Pacific Northwest making bitter, hop-heavy India pale ales. He said he strives for balance, not just sourness.

“I didn’t sign on to the hops arms race,” he said, “and I’m not going to go down the road of, ‘My beer is more sour than yours.’ ”

A version of this article appears in print on June 2, 2010, on Page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: Sour Beer Is Risky Business, Starting With the Name. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe